News Watch Thomas Griffith: Where Do You Get Your News?

The idea that most Americans get most of their news from television has
for some time been regarded as both true and alarming. With noble earnestness,
Walter Cronkite used to plead that his half-hour script would not fill
three-quarters of a single newspaper page and that distortion was "the
inevitable result of trying to get ten pounds of news into the
one-pound sack we are given each night." Speaking at a du Pont Awards
ceremony at Columbia University in February, NBC's Tom Brokaw said that
unfortunately many Americans "have come to rely on us as their primary
and only...